Cubs, an all encompassing trip

Wood, Cubs Battle Verlander but Come Up Short

Sometimes teams just beat you, sometimes a pitcher is just better than you, and that is exactly what happened today. The Tigers and Justin Verlander were just better than the Cubs and Travis Wood today. I’m okay with that, today was a baseball game and the Cubs came up a little short. After falling behind 2-0 early on runs in the first and second by Detroit the Cubs bounced right back with two in the bottom half of the second inning to tie things at two. The game would stay that way into the 7th inning as Verlander and Wood were dueling. Wood however was working much harder than Verlander as he worked himself into and out of jams for the majority of the day. It finally caught up to him in the seventh as Detroit pushed across a run to take a 3-2 lead. The normally reliable, and overworked Shawn Camp surrendered two runs in the top of the 9th to give the Tigers an insurmountable 5-2 lead. The Cubs tried to make it interesting in the ninth with a lead-off double by they were only able to scratch across one run to make it 5-3 and that’s how it would end.

As I mentioned already Travis Wood worked himself into a lot of jams. The Tigers put the lead-off man on base in every inning that Wood pitched, all seven of them featured a runner on base with no outs. Pretty amazing that Wood was able to last that long given that stat. Wood finished his day after 6.2 innings allowing three runs on eight hits, he walked two and struck out three. With the loss Travis Wood falls to 0-3 on the season, while his ERA sits at 4.58. The Cubs could have been better at the plate in regards to working the count later in the game, but for the most part they put up a good fight against Verlander. Darwin Barney had another solid day at the plate as he was 2-for-3 with his 15th double of the season, he is now hitting .279. Another monster weekend ahead as the Boston Red Sox, and their fans, invade Wrigley Field. Full box score and highlights after the jump.

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